Value integration through social innovation in blue-green infrastructure projects

Blue and green infrastructure (BGI) projects such as rain gardens, green roofs and water squares, embody a variety of values such as technical (drainage), environmental (biodiversity), economic (property development) and social (health and wellbeing). Because these values have proven to be challenging to integrate, local governments are increasingly experimenting with social innovation (SI) as a bottom-up form of value integration. Because we lack knowledge about different ways of how value integration is achieved, we compare four BGI city projects in North-Western Europe that share the ambition to realise BGI through SI. The findings reveal that social innovation leads to four ways of value integration: materialistic, human, organisational and process. These value integration arrangements unfortunately seem to mainly contribute to greater alignment between values rather than true value integration. Our research helps to better detect where and when public values are dealt with in BGI projects.